Archive for the ‘travel’ Category

Yes yes it’s been ages and ages since I’ve posted here. The primary reason is laziness. The secondary reason is that Emma and I have started a new blog: It Never Snowed, which is documenting our family adventure to Bangalore for a two-year assignment. See you there, and hope you enjoy it

We are off to England tomorrow for a well deserved break plus to drink good beer, eat fish and chips and also show the kids off to family. Really looking forward to it.

However first I have to get through my least favorite activity in the world – packing. I’m actually pretty good at it, especially with all the travel I did in the last few years for work, but I still loathe doing it. Unpacking is totally fine, and I don’t know why it’s such a deal but there we are. And once I get started it only takes a few minutes but I end up stalling by cleaning, complaining and writing meandering blog posts.

Saw this on BoingBoing today – a video of a train crossing in Bangalore.

Having been there a few times and spent a large percentage of that time stuck in traffic, this is exactly what it’s like. Everyone’s trying to get to their destination as fast as possible with very little regard for rules or safety. And driving between cities (for example when we went from Bangalore to Mysore and back) was exactly the same, except at 70 miles per hour.

Finally, pictures of our Bermuda trip. It’s been so cold in Minneapolis I haven’t been able to stop shivering for long enough to be able to type, let alone use iPhoto. Anyway, I think the pics came out pretty well – here they are

Day … ooh … six or something of our trip to Bermuda. Losing track of the days, it’s just what we need. Today is the coolest day so far, but it’s relative – it’s actually about 70F and it’s still OK to wear shorts. It was warm in the morning so we decided to go to Bermuda Botanical Gardens. It’s a really impressive place, especially considering how little open space there is on the island. Some really beautiful and interesting trees and shrubs – lots of palm trees and an awesome banyan tree which is massive. We nipped into their little cafeteria for lunch, just a wee sandwich served by volunteer church-hall type ladies, all very friendly and quite British. Then as we were looking around the gardens and shivering a little (it had rained while we were having lunch and was quite cool for an hour or so afterwards) we noticed the aroma of something quite, um, herbal. Perhaps better described as something smokeable by the jazz community. It seemed quite incongorous, and we assumed that it was the brawny gardeners who were responsible rather than the nice ladies of the cafeteria.

We’re back in Bermuda for a couple of weeks. Yes I know I just started a new job four weeks ago, but this has been booked for a while. It’s great to be back – the weather is a tad cooler than last time we were here, but still excellent, in the mid to high 70s with plenty of sun so far. A great tonic from November in Minnesota.

Yesterday we took the ferry into Hamilton to see the Remembrance Day parade, then another ferry to the Dockyards for good food and drink at the Frog and Onion pub. Today we drove to a beach to hang out in the sun. Toby was much more confident about going into the ocean than this time last year, and Dara seemed to be very happy in the breeze on the beach. She has slept almost the whole four hours since we got back to the house

Ages ago I did a quick post on the fix for the Firefox ActiveX error and how to resolve it. For a few months I’ve noticed people finding the entry through a web search, but just in the last day two kind souls have added thank you comments. It’s quite gratifying to know that I’ve helped make the world happier in a very small way.

Right now I’m in Chicago’s O’Hare airport waiting for my flight home. This has been a good week workwise but I just can’t wait to get home.